


index the heart

by crumbling



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-09-09 02:36:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8872447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crumbling/pseuds/crumbling
Summary: a picture's worth a memory trace.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> Or: For whom I would take fifty bullets.

_I found a roll of film. I think it’s from last summer._

 

 

 

The summer that Vernon refers to in this message is the summer he and Minghao moved from their little town into the city. Rent wasn’t cheap despite the near-squalor they lived in. There was a noticeable hole in the floor where mice could have gotten in (which would explain the holes in their sheets that appeared in winter), and the faucets dripped incessantly. Minghao could never sleep unless there was a pillow sandwiching his head, dampening the _plop… plop… plop_ … Nonetheless, they were happy. Poor and happy.

 

 

 

_Send it to me._

 

 

 

Vernon’s job had him working odd hours. Sometimes he’d be home before midnight, sometimes he wouldn’t come home at all; he’d just stay at his desk until his eyelids would fall shut and he’d wake up an hour or so later to see a blank email reply, and find himself unable to remember what exactly he was supposed to say. The job wasn’t what he was expecting, no, but it paid the bills. It kept their feet warm with convenience store socks and their stomachs full of cup noodles. It paid for rolls and rolls of film, of which maybe five pictures turned out as Minghao had hoped.

 

 

 

_I just dropped it off to get developed._

 

 

 

Minghao’s studio, if it could be called that, doubled as a dining room, bedroom, and living room. He lugged a broken bookshelf he found near the dumpster up four flights of stairs and filled it with camera lenses and books, biographies of Dorothea Lange and Sally Mann. On the top shelf he taped up polaroids taken at his senior art exhibition. A small plush sheep overlooked them, proudly and wistfully looking out the window at a brick wall across the alley. Vernon had won it for him at a charity fair leading up to his graduation. Art history degrees do not come quickly, as he’d learned.

 

 

 

 

 

 

_HANDLE WITH CARE_

 

It was so much like Vernon to label a parcel this way. Minghao laughs to himself and sets his coat down on the hardwood floor and gets to opening it. It’s no easy feat because there is tape covering every inch of the paper, water-sealed for good measure, because Vernon believes in preserving things. He laminated a copy of his thesis so that there would always be proof should the internet be destroyed when the aliens inevitably take over the world.

 

Also in Vernon’s character, the padded envelope is markably thick, decorated with stickers and warnings written in Sharpie pen. When Minghao finally gets the damn thing unraveled, he finds inside another envelope filled with four by six photographs. All of the edges are tinged a cloudy burgundy, like they’d been dipped in red wine before they were sent. The film must have sat in the camera for months.

 

The first picture is grainy. Minghao’s hands had been shaking when he took it, because the excitement of getting off the plane had mixed toxically with the flight anxiety. He can remember exactly how he felt when he took it. How Vernon had looked at him almost incredulously, like he couldn’t believe he’d take a picture of an airport parking lot. But it was a memory, and Minghao never liked to think that one day they’d fade. That one day he wouldn’t remember what had been running through his mind at a given point of time.

 

The next picture is of Vernon, asleep at the kitchen table. A textbook was open under his messy hair. When the camera flashed, he’d woken up, but that wasn’t captured on film. His hair had grown long and red from spending so much time in the sun. The freckles on his cheekbones aren’t visible, but Minghao remembers them being there.

 

A photo of the alleycat that wandered around the neighborhood, with soft black fur and white paws that made it look like she was always wearing socks. They thought she was a male cat until she led them to meet her kittens. Vernon was convinced that this cat was a symbol of something, but never said what. Minghao never gave it much thought until now, sitting cross-legged on the hardwood floor, back against the door. One of the neighbors is singing something quietly to herself as she walks down the hall.

 

A few pictures pass with few strong recollections attached. A four-way intersection that they crossed a million times on their way to the convenience store, a shot of Minghao’s silhouette against an bruise-colored sky. Not a skin bruise, but a fruit bruise, as Vernon put it. Quite a few of the photos are of Vernon, taken at times where he’s not paying attention. But there is one that makes Minghao’s breath hitch a little against his Adam’s apple, producing a soft, grotesque noise.

 

It is of both him and Vernon, out on their fire escape. It was not connected to their unit, but rather at the very end of the hall. When they moved in, Minghao joked that if the building was to catch on fire, their centrally-situated apartment would hear of it last, and they’d burn along with it. From the angle of Vernon’s arm, it is clear that he took the photo, but he’s not looking at the camera. He is looking at Minghao, who looks back at him with sleepy eyes. Vernon is smiling, genuinely. Many times, photos taken in this manner look forced and posed. But Vernon is smiling with his whole heart, lips curling around pretty white teeth.

 

In one of many email correspondences with Jihoon, Minghao had been told about the Indexing Theory of memory, the object of Jihoon’s obsession for the last two years. Otherwise known as the focus of his dissertation. Regardless, it proposes that because memories are multimodal, being comprised of so many different inputs (emotional, visual, auditory…), a full memory can be retrieved with just a single cue. He believes it now. He suddenly and forcefully remembers how safe he felt in that moment, how it felt perfect for the pieces of his life to coalesce into this.

 

Minghao looks at this photo the longest. It’s difficult to rejoin such polarized feelings. Being in love with Vernon and being apart. There is the happiness and warmth of looking back into the past, into a summer that is long over. He wonders, still holding a corner of the photograph in his hands, how long he’s been trying to slot these two things together, and when he stopped trying to.

 

But in this picture, where the sky is overcast and the sun is setting, and the world around them is sepia toned—maybe that’s the film damage—and Vernon is smiling. This is their picture, their instant in which there is no wedge of time or space between them.

 

 

 

 

 

_I’m outside._

 

 

 

What Minghao loves about photography is how it so accurately depicts the past. But what excites him, what keeps him going, what propels him into forward motion, is how beautifully it will capture the future.

 

 

 

“Welcome home.”

 

 

 

 

 

**CLICK**

 

 

 

Autumn slips away with a harsh wind, and Minghao has a new set of polaroids. Vernon had taken them while he was in New York. They depict a stuffed sheep seeing the sights: drinking coffee at an independent coffee house, looking up at the Empire State building, hailing a taxi.

 

“He wanted to show you everything,” Vernon explains, after the cardboard boxes made their way up all the stairs. “He didn’t want you to miss him.”

 

Minghao makes a face. “Why are you speaking in the third person?”

 

Vernon sticks out his tongue, and before he can yank it back, Minghao takes his picture.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> a/n: making my comeback onto ao3 with a drabble-type thing i've had the mind to write for my best friend for a long time. this is my way of saying that i love them very much, and i hope i did their otp justice. ;; i love these two for all their quiet, playful dynamics.


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